Re: push.default documented in "man git-push"?

From: Junio C Hamano <gitster@pobox.com>
Date: Oct 8, 2012, 17:12 UTC
Message-ID: <7v8vbgnb19.fsf@alter.siamese.dyndns.org>
In-Reply-To: <20121003214051.GD4484@sigill.intra.peff.net>

Jeff King <peff@peff.net> writes:

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> On Wed, Oct 03, 2012 at 11:26:55AM -0700, Junio C Hamano wrote:
>
>> Please do not label the list as "These variables affect this
>> command" to give a false impression that it is the complete list if
>> it isn't.
>> 
>> Unless somebody promises to keep an up-to-date complete list there
>> (or even better, come up with a mechanism to help us keep that
>> promise automatically, perhaps by annotating pieces with structured
>> comments in config.txt and automatically appending such a section to
>> manual pages of relevant commands), that is.
>>
>> With a weaker phrase, e.g. "These configuration variables may be of
>> interest", such a list may not hurt readers, but personally I do not
>> think it adds much value to have a list of variables without even a
>> single line description of what each is used for.
>
> We talked a while ago about actually moving the config options into the
> individual manpages, and generating config.txt to simply contain an
> index of keys and where their definitions may be found. That also has
> the "list without description" characteristic. But presumably you would
> be looking for keys in the manual of the command you want to affect, and
> the master list would mostly be for redirecting you to the right
> manpage.

That cuts both ways for configuration variables that affects or are affected by multiple commands, and that would range from the trivial example of configuration variables for fetch and merge that appear to take effect in "git pull" from the end users' perspective, to the more complex ones like remotes.*.merge and remotes.*.url that are set to make the @{upstream} notation work.

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> It does break down a little when you have keys that could go in multiple
> pages. In many cases, this can be solved by a canonical location that
> describes the shared concepts. For example, `diff.*` should probably go
> into a `gitdiff(7)` that talks about the various diff options and
> formats.
>
> Of course, that only works if you think pulling out the shared diff bits
> from git-diff*, git-log, etc into a separate manpage is a good idea. I
> do, because I think it makes it more clear to the reader how the
> concepts connect (as opposed to simply including shared bits inline in
> the manpages, as we do now, with no indication that the same content is
> going to apply in many places). But it does have a downside that
> individual manpages are not as easily searchable via the pager, as you
> may have to follow a cross-reference to find what you want.

I suspect that approach would make individual manual pages less approacheable by new people, as they will have more required reading.

git(1) currently guides people to user manual, and then points at individual pages, assuming that these shared concepts (e.g. the one for "diff" you discuss in the above paragraph) are fully mastered once the user manual is read. Perhaps we would need to replace it with a "concepts" manual, or enhance it with more "concepts" material?